vi.]

UNREALITY OF UNINTELLIGENT FAITH.

107

at present of religious disputes in that communion. They boast of this as a perfection; but it is, in truth, a sign of deadness, a sign of the indifference of all to the subjects in question. Why is it that the question of the Immaculate Conception, which convulsed the Christian world four centuries ago, was disposed of by Pius IX. with scarcely a murmur? It was because the people did not care about the matter. The superstitious were glad to pay a compliment to the great object of their veneration, but whether what they asserted was true, I suppose hardly ten lay Roman Catholics in Europe ever troubled their heads. And if the question brought before the Vatican Council had been of a purely spiritual nature, had the bishops been only required to affirm such a doctrine as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary—that is to say, to assert a historical fact without a particle of evidence-I do not think many would have rebelled. It was because the doctrine of the Pope's personal Infallibility had bearings on the practical business of this world; because its assertion was supposed to be intended for the preservation or recovery of the Pope's temporal sovereignty; because the claim would enable him to interfere with more effect on questions of toleration, civil liberty, marriage, and education, that so much difficulty was made about conceding it.

I cannot help quoting words written by Mr. Maskell, one of the early Oxford perverts, on the occasion of the decree of the Vatican Council. They express his natural indignation at seeing his whole Church rush blindfold into acquiescence in a decision which he knew to be false; but he does not seem to have reflected that the state of mind which can acquiesce so indifferently in any decision of authority, is the natural result of that belief in the need of an infallible guide which led himself astray. He says: 'There are numbers of people who take on trust, without consideration, what they are asked to believe in matters of religion; some from habit and want of discipline in their education; some from a dislike of trouble; some from what they pretend to be a proper subjection to their teachers, thus trying to throw upon others a responsibility for which themselves will have to answer to God hereafter; some from sheer carelessness and want of interest; some, once

more, because they do not comprehend what is involved in their assent. To call such an assent faith, is utterly to miscall it. There is very little faith in it. A state of mind which can admit so readily of additions to its creed would be very likely not long to withstand a demand to change it altogether.'

This extract truly describes the practical effect of stunting men's intelligence, in the hope of making their faith more lively. The faith generated by such a process is found not to be worthy of the name. If any human system were to propose to keep men virtuous, by keeping them always in the state of childhood, and never permitting them to govern their own conduct, such a system would be plainly opposed to the course which the Author of nature has preferred. Equally opposed to His method is any system which proposes to preserve men from error by keeping them in the state of childhood, and by giving them truths to be received on authority without inquiry. And it is opposed not only to the course of nature, but to the commands of Scripture, which enjoins us to be ready to give every man a reason of the hope that is in us': 'in malice, indeed, to be children, but in understanding to be men.'

A Romanist, as I have said, must acknowledge that the existence of an infallible Church does not exclude error from the world, for more than half of those who call themselves Christians unfortunately cannot be convinced of the claims of that Church on their allegiance. But, while the existence of error remains as distressing a problem to the Romanist as to us, he is deprived of the compensation which we find in the improved condition of those who have honestly sought for truth and been successful. The problem is the same to him as that of the existence of sin in the world would be to us, if, while all the vice in the world remained the same, we could find nowhere examples of any higher kind of virtue than that which consists in the absence of temptation.

THE CHURCH'S OFFICE OF TEACHING.

ON

N the last day I sufficiently showed that the foundation for their system, which Roman Catholics assume as self-evident, namely, that God has appointed someone on earth able to give infallible guidance to religious truth, admits of no proof, and is destitute of all probability. But when we say that God has not provided us with infallible guidance, we are very far from saying that He has provided for us no guidance at all. I do not think a Protestant can render a greater service to the cause of Romanism than by depreciating the value of the guidance towards the attainment of religious truth given us by the Church which Christ has founded. Hoc Ithacus velit.' This is the alternative they want to bring us to--either an infallible Church, whose teaching is to be subject to no criticism and no correction, or else no Church teaching at all, each individual taking the Bible, and getting from it, by his own arbitrary interpretation, any system of doctrine he can. Reducing us to this alternative, they have no difficulty in showing that the latter method inevitably leads to a variety of discordant error; and they conclude we are forced to fall back on the other.

But in what subject in the world is it dreamed that we have got to choose between having infallible teachers, or else having no teacher at all? God has made the world so that we cannot do without teachers. We come into the world as ignorant as we are helpless: not only dependent on the care of others for food and warmth, without which neglected infancy must perish, but dependent on the instruction of others for our most elementary knowledge. The most original

discoverer that ever lived owed the great bulk of his knowledge to the teaching of others, and the amount of knowledge which he has added to the common stock bears an infinitesimally small proportion to that which he inherited. To think of being independent of the teaching of others, is as idle as to think of being independent of the atmosphere which surrounds us. Roman Catholic advocates can show, with perfect truth, that anyone who imagines he is drawing his system of doctrine all by himself from the Bible alone, really does nothing of the kind. Of course, if a man reads the Bible in a translation, he cannot imagine that he is independent of help from others. In any case, the selection of books that make the volume was made for him by others; the reverence that he pays to its contents is due to instruction which he received in his boyhood; and, besides, it is undeniable that it is natural to us all to read the Bible in the light of the previous instruction we received in our youth. How else is it that the members of so many different sects each find in the Bible the doctrines they have been trained to expect to find there?

Human teaching, then, we cannot possibly do without in any subject whatever; but are our teachers infallible? I grant that, by children and ignorant persons, it is necessary that they should practically be regarded so. It is said that, when Dr. Busby showed Charles II. over Westminster School, he kept on his own hat, though the king was bareheaded, and explained to the monarch afterwards that he should lose all authority over his boys if they once found out that there was anyone in the kingdom greater than himself, Certain it is that boys will not respect a teacher if they find out that he is capable of making mistakes. And this frame of mind is the best for the pupils' progress. When our knowledge is scanty, it is more important that we should be receptive than critical; or rather, if we attempt to be critical, we cannot be properly receptive. In the earliest stages, then, of instruction, a student makes most progress if he gets a teacher in whom he can put faith, and accepts from him with docility all the information he is able to impart to him. But you know that the teacher's infallibility is not real: it is only relative and

VII.] THE BEST HUMAN TEACHING NOT INFALLIBLE.

temporary; and an advanced student, instead of respecting a man more, respects him less if he pretends that he is incapable of sometimes making a slip. It is a maxim with chess-players, if you meet a player who says he has never been beaten, to offer to give him the odds of the rook. And what is intended plainly is, that the delusion of invincibility can never grow up in the mind of anyone except one who has never met a strong antagonist. Just in the same way, the delusion of infallibility can never grow up except in the mind of one who only mixes with inferiors, and does not allow his opinions to be tested by independent criticism. And we may say the same of Churches as of individuals. An infallible Church does not mean a Church which makes no mistakes, but only one which will neither acknowledge its mistakes nor correct them.

With respect to the teaching of secular knowledge, Universities have a function in some sort corresponding to that which the Church has been divinely appointed to fulfil in the communication of religious knowledge. If I said that University teaching of the mathematical and physical sciences was not infallible, you would not suspect me of being so ungrateful as to wish to disparage that teaching to which I owe all my own knowledge of these subjects. You would not suppose that I wished our students to receive with hesitation and suspicion the lessons of their instructors. You would not suppose that I was myself in the least sceptical as to the substantial truth of what is taught in these lessons. And yet I could not help owning that University teaching may possibly include errors, and must be willing to admit correction. Why, I could name one point of astronomical science in which it has altered within my own experience. When I was taught the planetary theory, I was given a demonstration, which I accepted as conclusive, that the changes in the orbits of the planets caused by their mutual action were all of a periodic character, and could not overthrow the stability of the system. At present the contrary opinion prevails, and it is held that the solar system is not constituted for eternal duration, In any case, no one can imagine that University teaching was infallible in those